


Lobelia Should Never Grow so Close to the Water Lily

by sweetNsimple



Series: Orange Roses and White Lilies [4]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Cisco Ramon, Big Belly Burger, Cisco and Harry Are IN LOVE, Fluff, Happy Ending, Humor, M/M, Metahuman Caitlin Snow, Original Character(s), Past Abuse, Past Rape, Past Relationships, Pokemon GO - Freeform, Very vague Killerwave, Very vague Mick Rory/Caitlin Snow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2016-07-11
Packaged: 2018-07-22 21:37:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7454761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetNsimple/pseuds/sweetNsimple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It is not my identity you should be concerned with right now so much as what relationship we have in common, past or present,” the stranger hissed at him.  “We are going to take our food and leave and then we are going to have a… discussion about your treatment of Cisco Ramon.”  He gave Nathan such a cold look that he felt chilled.  “Who is, in fact, my significant other.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lobelia Should Never Grow so Close to the Water Lily

“…  And then, when I _did_ figure out that she’d given me the wrong number on purpose, she threatened to call the cops on me for stalking her.”  Nathan’s date snorted and shook his head.  “Stalking her?  She works at Circle K down the street from my apartment.  The first time I ever said more than ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to her was when I asked for the damn number.”

Nathan Dirko chuckled, wrapping an arm around Dylon’s shoulders and pulling him in closer.  “I’ve got one for you that tops even that.”

Dylon smiled up at him.  Dylon had those dark eyes and bronze skin that Nathan was partial to, and also stood a head shorter.  Nathan liked that, liked being taller, liked _feeling_ bigger.  His muscled arm playfully hooked around Dylon’s neck was bulging compared to Dylon’s slim and willowy physique and it made Nathan feel _powerful_. 

He liked to think that he could talk Dylon into a second date after this.  The fact that Dylon had been the one to pick Big Belly Burger for the first date just made him all the better.

“Oh, yeah?”  Dylon asked.  “What could be worse than someone threatening to call the cops on you?”

“Back in Stanford, I met this kid in the Gay-Straight Alliance Club,” Nathan began, feeling the memory tug at his good mood.  “His name was Cisco.  Cisco R-something, Hell if I can remember.  He worked for S.T.A.R. Labs even after the particle accelerator exploded, you could probably find it out online.”  He remembered how Cisco had looked, though, without googling him – not totally unlike Dylon to be honest, but Nathan had always had a type.  “He was really young to be in college, but he was a prodigy, a real genius at mechanical engineering.  You could give him a fork and a rubber band and he could make you a radio.”

“Still have feelings for him, it sounds like,” Dylon muttered, suddenly subdued.

“Not even,” Nathan spat.  He forced himself to calm down when Dylon looked at him with surprise and a small bit of apprehension.  Nathan had a bit of a temper and he tried really hard to keep it in check, especially around people he wanted to like him.  Cisco, though?

Cisco was a sore spot for him.

“There could have been, but he was – ” A dozen different words for what Cisco had been – probably still was – flew through Nathan’s mind.  None of them were good and most of them would have made his grandmother turn white to hear him say.  “He had issues or something,” he finally grumbled, feeling as if he was being too nice to the memory of Cisco R-whatever.  “We started dating and it was pretty great for the first couple of months.  Then he just… changed.  He dismantled my fridge, took the windows out of my car, broke my air conditioning…  I still don’t know how he did it, but I didn’t have hot shower in my apartment for a whole _month_ once.  No one else in Housing had any issues, just me.”  God, he hated Cisco.  “Then he broke up with me through text.” 

He still remembered the exact wording.  He’d felt like he’d been fighting for them, like the Good Guy.  While Cisco had been sabotaging him and making his life a living Hell, Nathan had gone out of his way to try to talk to Cisco, to get more than some bullshit, lame ass excuse out of him for why he was doing the things he was doing.

 _I won’t do this anymore_ , the text had said.

_I’m done._

Like Nathan had been hurting _Cisco_ somehow. 

“Wow, he sounds like a real psycho,” Dylon sympathized.  “Do you know why he did it?”

“He never gave me the truth,” Nathan admitted.  “He had this really fucking stupid reason instead.  He told me he was asexual and that he didn’t want sex.  Then I’d tell him I didn’t want to be a relationship without it and he’d have sex with me anyway.  Then he’d cry afterward and blame _me_ , like I’d forced him or something.  I never held him down.  If he really didn’t want to have sex, then I don’t have to be a relationship that I’m getting nothing out of.”

Dylon was oddly tense for a long moment.  “Wow, Nathan…  It kind of sounds like, um…  Have you ever thought that, maybe, to him, you threatening to leave _was_ like holding him down?”

Nathan took his arm back.  Dylon took a step back from him, putting a good two feet between them. 

“Do _you_ think that?” Nathan growled.

Dylon, for a moment, looked absolutely terrified.  Nathan tried to get a hold of his temper, but all he could think was that the cute guy who had taken him on a date to Big Belly Burger thought he was a rapist or something. 

Nathan had _never_ forced Cisco!  He’d told Cisco the truth – no sex, no relationship, and that shouldn’t make him the Bad Guy for wanting something out of a romantic relationship.  If Cisco didn’t want sex, he shouldn’t have agreed to be Nathan’s boyfriend.  If he hadn’t wanted sex, he should have broken off the relationship.  Instead, Nathan had said ‘I want – ” and Cisco had given, and then Cisco had cried, and Cisco had glared at him, and Cisco had acted like Nathan was hurting him.

The worst Nathan had ever done was throw some things.  Yell a little bit.  He’d been _angry_.  He knew he had anger issues, but at least he hadn’t been like his mom who’d thrown fists instead of mugs. 

He grappled with control over himself.  He was better than that now.  Always improving.  Always gaining over the violence his mom had left in him.

He forced himself to smile, though he didn’t really feel it.  “You wouldn’t understand,” he told Dylon.  “I knew Cisco – all you know is what I’ve told you.  Maybe it sounds different to you than how it really was.”

Dylon nodded hesitantly.  “Maybe that’s it.” 

“I know Cisco Ramon, actually,” a voice from behind them said. 

A man wearing a black jacket and a ball cap was staring right at Nathan.  He was tall and pale and looked disturbingly familiar.  Nathan knocked about in his head until he remembered.  _Dr. Harrison Wells_.

Of course.

But Dr. Harrison Wells had been convicted of murder through his own video testimony, reported missing after that black hole had torn open the sky, and then presumed dead like dozens of others.  This couldn’t be _the_ Dr. Harrison Wells.  Just a look-a-like.  Everyone always looked like someone else.

Nathan still felt unnerved, like standing on the edge of a crumbling cliff.  Something in the way the stranger stared at him made him think that he was in a trap.  One wrong move and he’d never make it out alive.

It was a long moment before those intense blue eyes shifted from him to Dylon.  “You should go,” he told Dylon.  “You know this isn’t right.”

Dylon looked from the stranger to Nathan and then, leaving Nathan feeling shocked and bitter, he quickly strode out of Big Belly Burger. 

The couple in front of them, who seemed to have been completely oblivious to their conversation, finally left with their orders.  The cashier smiled tiredly at Nathan and the stranger.

“Welcome to Big Belly Burger,” she said, voice full of false cheer.  “What can I get you?”

The stranger took Dylon’s place, wrapping his hand tightly around Nathan’s wrist.  He wasn’t half as stocky as Nathan, but the power he emitted made Nathan feel small by comparison. 

Feeling small made him feel angry. 

“We’ll take two Deluxe Big Belly Burger Meals to go,” the stranger said.

“Who the fuck do you think – ”

“It is not my identity you should be concerned with right now so much as what relationship we have in common, past or present,” the stranger hissed at him.  “We are going to take our food and leave and then we are going to have a… discussion about your treatment of Cisco Ramon.”  He gave Nathan such a cold look that he felt chilled.  “Who is, in fact, my significant other.”

~::~

Pokémon Go guaranteed that Cisco and Jesse had both lost track of time and were also not anywhere in sight by the time Harrison returned to S.T.A.R. Labs.  The only person present was Dr. Snow and she quickly powered down her phone.  Her wide-eyed look of guilt and innocence had the effect of irritating him more than he already had been, which in and of itself was an issue.  Dr. Snow had done nothing wrong and Harrison wasn’t even upset with her.

He was angry in general, and bitter as well as ready to fight a concrete wall. 

They stared at each other for a tense moment simply because he wasn’t sure how to tell her that he honestly didn’t care if she played Pokémon Go and also for her to get the Hell out simultaneously. 

At least, he couldn’t think of a nice way to say it.  It possibly existed, but did so outside of his immediate vocabulary.

“So…” Dr. Snow began slowly.  “Didn’t you go to get food five hours ago?  It’s dinnertime now.”

“I was delayed.”  He felt capable of murder.  Judging by how she went rigid and lifted her head so that she resembled more of a regal cat than someone who wasn’t entirely certain of their own safety, he could assume that he wasn’t doing a good job of hiding it.

“At Big Belly Burger?  It’s a fast food restaurant.  It’s known for being _fast food_.  At its busiest, it still shouldn’t have taken this long.”

“The food was fast,” he admitted with a terse jaw.  It had been the company that had not gone by fast.

At first, he had been too angry to think of why Nathan had not created a scene in Big Belly Burger.  After leaving, the reason why had occurred to him, shaped exactly like Nathan’s fist and dawning upon Harrison exactly like that same fist driving into his abdomen. 

Harrison had failed to recognize that Nathan might have anger issues.  That was alright because Harrison also had anger issues, and had also survived several other personalities with anger issues.  Nathan had bulk, but Harrison had experience.

He was still infinitely glad that every blow Nathan had dealt had not been to the face.  It would not have been so easy to hide.  His blows had not been so kind and he had aimed to break that handsome face.  It wasn’t the first time Harrison had partaken in physical violence, but it had been one of the most satisfying instances. 

Dr. Snow was studying him with leaden suspicion.  “Then why did it take you so long to get back?”

“Did something happen while I was gone?  Something that required my immediate attention lest the fabric of time and space suddenly dissolve and leave us in a void?”

“No, but it _is_ unusual for you to be gone for so long.”

“I needed to get out for a little while.”

“Out _where_?”

“Dr. Snow, would you care to explain to me why most of your pokémon are fire type and also why your screen background is an image of vulpix on Rory’s head?”

Her strange blue eyes widened.  “You know what a vulpix is?”

“My significant other and my daughter are both running around Central City playing Pokémon Go.  If you think that they don’t come back at the end of the night and gloat over every wheedle and zubat they saw, then you would be very mistaken.”

She gave a most unladylike snort.  “Those aren’t anything to gloat about, those are pests.”

She slapped a hand down on the pile of loose paper to her left as a sudden intense wind blew through the lab.

Barry Allen leaned over the computer panel to give Dr. Snow a look of betrayal and agony.

“You took my gym from me?”

She nodded and gripped his shoulder consolingly.  “I can take better care of it.  Besides, if _I_ hadn’t, Leonard would have.”

“I thought we were on the same team.”

She bit her lip.  “I was…  But then the Rogues propositioned me.”

“You left us for _The Rogues_?”

“Barry, they actually _pay_ you to be on their team.”

Barry gawked.  “ _Len_ ,” he hissed with sudden realization.  “That fucking _dick_.”

Harrison’s eyebrow shot up.  Not often did Allen say ‘fuck’ and he wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that digital pokémon were apparently enough to move him to vulgarity.  He would have expected that sort of thing from Cisco.

“While you were out being a responsible adult committed to the duty of protecting Central City from criminals with super human abilities, did you happen to see my daughter and significant other anywhere?”

Allen flushed.  “Uh, no, actually…  I was, uh, kind of not really in Central City?”

“Where were you?” Dr. Snow asked.

“I was… kind of at the ocean?”

“Looking for water-type pokémon,” she said, frost creeping across the paper beneath her hand.  It crinkled under the weight of ice.  “Without me.  You said if you went to the ocean again, you would take me with you.”

“It’s not like you’re on Team Flash anymore.  Ask Shawna to take you since you two are so close now.”

“Now you’re just being petty.”

“Children,” Harrison interrupted.  “Where is my daughter and my significant other?”

Allen looked up, pointed behind Harrison, and then turned on Dr. Snow again.  “First you took my gym and then you just abandon me?”

“Try not to make this personal, it’s not like that at all.  It’s just…  It’s Pokémon.  And I have to catch them all.  I can’t do that with you holding me back.”

“I’m the Flash!  Do you know how many eggs I hatch in a day?  Do you know how many pokémon I find?”

“And how many of them do you catch before they’re too far out of range again?”

“I don’t just run past them!”

“I have actually wondered about that,” Cisco announced from the entryway behind Harrison.  “So, like, when there’s a metahuman attack, do you stop every point three seconds to catch a pokémon?  How many pokéballs do you use in a day?  In an _hour_?”

“Hey, dad,” Jesse greeted, and Harrison finally turned around to see the pain in the ass he was in love with and the pain in the ass he loved dearly side by side.

It always sent a thrill through him, how well they got along.  As if he really could have them both and not have to choose.

“Guess what I caught?”  She already had her phone out and was moving to corner him while Cisco loped to his right.  They had planned this attack.

“Yeah, she got some pretty cool stuff,” Cisco said with faked nonchalance.  He smiled brilliantly.  “But _mine_ are way cooler.”

“As if,” Jesse snorted.  “You have a tangelo and a charmeleon.  _I_ have dragonair.”

Allen whistled.  “Okay, yeah, she has you beat, Cisco.  I’m sorry, man.”

“Don’t be too proud of her,” Cisco warned.  “She’s a traitor.”

Jesse smiled apologetically at Barry.  “We ran into Lisa on our way back and she told me about the Rogues having a team.”

“No,” Barry begged.  “Please, Jesse, no.”

“Yes,” Cisco answered, shattering Allen’s already precarious trust in others.  “She did exactly what you think she did.”  Cisco glared at her.  “That dragonair isn’t so impressive anymore.”

“It’s still pretty impressive,” Dr. Snow said.  “I am actually very impressed.”

Cisco walked into Harrison and bumped his head affectionately against his shoulder, wordlessly asking to be pulled close.  Harrison indulged him by wrapping an arm around his significant other and gently rubbing his thumb over the point where clavicle met scapula.  The contact lasted a moment before Harrison let his arm drop and Cisco obligingly stepped away.  Public displays of affection had always been awkward for Harrison outside of intense emotional outbursts, which was at direct odds with Cisco’s need for physical reassurance that all was well between them. 

They compromised.

“You would be,” Allen was saying.  “You two are one and the same.”

“Yeah, Lisa told me Cait was on their team already.  It was one of the major selling points.  Nothing against you, Barry, you’re a really great guy, but my competitive streak won’t allow me to settle for less than the winning team.”

Allen made a noise in the back of his throat akin to a wounded herbivore being surrounded by salivating carnivores. 

Harrison finally felt his good humor – what little of it he had to begin with – return.  Allen suffering in such a mundane, unimportant way was surprisingly uplifting.  This was a sort of pain that Allen could recover from.  This was teasing, playful, and would most likely end in an epic pokémon battle between Team Flash and the Rogues. 

Cisco, still by Harrison’s side, nudged him for his attention.  “I’m starving.  Where’s my Big Belly Burger meal?”

Harrison held it up.  The sound Cisco made was at complete odds from what had crawled out of Allen’s throat and instead was of intense pleasure and oncoming satisfaction.

Cisco paused.  “Huh.  It’s hot.”

“Should it be cold?”

“I mean, I thought it would be.  Lunch was hours ago.  Did you just get this?”

“Yes.  I was busy today.”

“Without me?”

“Believe it or not, I do continue to exist when you are not in sight.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“No, you wouldn’t.  Because you are a child and you haven’t quite grasped the concept of object permanence yet, have you?”

“Hardy har har, asshole.”

“Sha la la la la la la, my oh my, look like the boy too shy, ain’t gonna kiss the boy!” Jesse suddenly crooned, smiling crookedly at them.

Allen shrugged helplessly.  “You flirt, you kiss.”

Dr. Snow gave Allen an indecisive look.  “I don’t think that’s _always_ the case.”

“Mick hates it, doesn’t he?” Allen guessed.

“He once told me that he would dump me if I tried to slobber all over his face.  He was serious.”

Harrison sighed and pecked Cisco on the lips, mostly to shut them up.  Jesse cheered – something he wasn’t sure whether or not to be uncomfortable with – and then he lingered a moment more.  Cisco liked kisses.  Harrison liked kisses.  His tendency to avoid public displays of affection aside, he did allow the kiss to linger simply because a part of him needed the warm, slightly chapped pressure of Cisco’s heartfelt affection pressed against his own cold lips. 

It had been a long day.  His talk with Nathan had been long.  Most of it _had_ been talk, though, even if some parts of it had been talking with his fists.  For four hours, Nathan had defended himself, his part in his past relationship with Cisco, and about how at least he had treated Cisco better than his parents had treated one another.

That had been a moment of pride for Nathan.  Yes, he knew he had a temper.  Yes, he had broken things.  Yes, he had yelled.

But his mom had been a true monster and at least he hadn’t been _her_.  Raised by a monster, Nathan’s goal to not become like her had been reached, but had sadly lacked the inspiration to become someone _better_. 

Indeed, for four hours, he and Nathan had squared off in a filthy alleyway three blocks down from big Belly Burger, and all Harrison had heard were excuses.

_“He could have said no at anytime.  He chose to stay.”_

_“I didn’t force him.”_

_“Maybe I broke some stuff, but at least I didn’t break him like my mom broke my dad.”_

_“I tried to make our relationship work.  He’s the one who didn’t try!”_

_“He was crazy!”_

_“He could have left if he really didn’t like it.”_

_“I never held him down.”_

_“Every time he said no, I told him I’d leave.”_

_“How am I wrong for wanting my boyfriend to have sex with me?”_

_“I’m allowed to want sex.”_

_“What about me?”_

_“What about what he did to me?”_

_“For someone who didn’t want sex, he got naked fast enough.”_

_“What about my needs?”_

_“He was my boyfriend.”_

_“I told him that I wasn’t going to be celibate just because he didn’t want to commit.”_

_“Boyfriends have sex.  If he didn’t want sex, he shouldn’t have gone on a date with me.”_

Harrison closed his eyes and breathed.

Technically, Nathan hadn’t been wrong.  It was no use to stay in a relationship where any person felt as if their needs were not being met.  If there were two people and one felt it was absolutely necessary for there to be sex and the other was absolutely against it, that was something they had to work out or it would be the breaking point.  Not all breaking points had to break the people involved.  It was no good to demonize one person over the other.  “If you want to have a relationship, you have to put out” did not have to war with “You can’t leave your partner just because they’re not putting out”; sometimes, “I’m not getting what I need and I can’t give you what you want” could be the most horrific and the most liberating experience any partner could have.

To love and set free and such. 

Technically, Nathan himself had been inexcusable.  He was the worst sort of person because he did not register what he had done as wrong in any way.  What he had done was not merely stating his requirements for a romantic relationship, which any individual was allowed to do.  What he had done was emotional manipulation and nothing less.  He had _said_ that he would leave, that the relationship would end, if Cisco did not give him sex.  And so Cisco had been forced to give him sex in order for him to stay.  Harrison hadn’t known Cisco in his college days, but he had briefly met Cisco’s family and he had a theory that, leaving home for the first time and at such a young age that he was possibly the youngest student living on campus, Cisco had been starved for affection.  Most likely eager for a relationship where he could be showered with genuine affection by a partner and return that affection tenfold. 

Instead, Cisco had met Nathan, and Nathan had made Cisco feel as if his happiness depended on Cisco opening himself up in a way Cisco had never been meant to open up to anyone, no matter his feelings toward them. 

Nathan had continuously abused Cisco and Cisco’s body and he had never been able to understand why Cisco had begun retaliating.  Cisco’s actions were not excusable, but, compared to what damage Nathan had wrought, Harrison was inexplicably proud and also bitter that Cisco had not done irreparable damage to Nathan’s penis.

Nathan had denied it to the very end when Harrison had finally knocked him unconscious and then left him in his boxers in that filthy alleyway with his clothes in a dumpster nine blocks East.  If Harrison asked Cisco, Cisco possibly wouldn’t even know it himself.

That did not make it untrue.

Nathan had raped Cisco. 

Harrison stared down at the younger man.  Cisco had returned to talking with the rest of the children and laughing, eyes dark and happy, his expression bright. 

There was so much power in this young man and Cisco did not even recognize it.  His wealth of courage and strength exhausted Harrison.

When Cisco had spoken of past relationships, it had always been plural.  More people than just Nathan had taken broken glass and rusty nails to Cisco’s psych and carved their names into his memory. 

Cisco wheedled Barry’s phone from him and went through his pokédex.  Harrison sincerely hoped that no one Cisco had dated had been half as terrible as Nathan. 

He sincerely hoped that Cisco never looked at him and saw someone half as terrible, or expressly as terrible, as Nathan. 

Cisco looked up from the pokédex, caught Harrison’s eye, and gifted him with a wiggle of his eyebrows.  “You’re missing out, Harry,” he all but sweet-talked.  “It’s not too late to join Team Flash.”

Dr. Snow and Jesse both turned to him in unison and gave him such an unforgiving glare that he knew he would never so much as glance at the Pokémon Go app under threat of having all of his major organs be removed overnight and end up on the black market.

“I’ll pass.  You kids go have fun.”

He hadn’t realized they were waiting for his permission, but suddenly they were all on their feet and rushing past him, taking to Central City’s street with energy that made him feel every year of his age plus a decade.

Cisco paused in the entryway, however, waiting for everyone else to disappear from sight.  Once they were alone, he spun on his heels, ran at Harrison, and attached them at the mouths. 

“I’ll eat on the go,” Cisco said, shaking the fast food bag.  “Thanks, Harry.”  He kissed him again.  He and Cisco would never make love in the sexual sense of the word, but when Cisco teased and nipped at his lips just so, Harrison remembered that there was more than one way to make love and Cisco had mastered this particular art form with such skill and precision that the animalistic and possessive part of Harrison that resided in his hind brain growled at the notion that Cisco had had to learn and be taught such tricks of lips and tongues and teeth. 

He forced that part of his psych back because he was a modern man of great intelligence and if he had had his past lovers and Tess, then he was mature enough to allow Cisco to have also had a past. 

Even if the parts of that past that Harrison had met up with recently made him think that perhaps locking Cisco away was safer for his significant other. 

“Love you,” Cisco whispered and then leaned up to kiss Harrison on the forehead.  “I better go catch up before Barry comes running back.”

“That would be unfortunate,” Harrison husked, and then forcibly cleared his throat.  He tried again.  “You and Jesse are the most important people I have in my life right now.  Keep each other safe.”

“Of course!”

It wasn’t until after Cisco was out of sight that Harrison, considering it, called out after him, “And keep her away from the Snarts!”

From further down the corridor, Jesse called back, “You will fail!”

Even further away, merely an echo, Allen added unhelpfully, “Well, it’s a little too late for that now, isn’t it?!”

He stood in the lab, alone except for the remnants of his exasperation toward the children he kept company with and the rage Nathan had inspired in him.  He took a deep breath and reconciled his emotions.

Harrison was in control.

Harrison was a full grown adult.

Harrison had beat a man he had never met before and had wasted four hours of his life exacting revenge for his significant other – revenge that he planned for Cisco to never learn about.

It appeared, he thought to himself, that he still hadn’t learned total self-control.

~::~

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write a story about Harrison meeting one of Cisco's past relationships since almost as soon as I began this series. Honestly, it was not supposed to be this dark. I put in the Pokemon Go to relieve some of the tension. Yes, Cisco's past relationships were supposed to be assholes, but not to this extent.


End file.
